The economic tide 'is coming in'

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Geoffrey Dicks, chief economist at Novus, told the Today programme's Lesley Curwen that survey data is "pointing towards growth in the first quarter" which will "cancel out" negative growth at the back end of last year.

Referring to what the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, called the "zig-zag" of the economy, Mr Dicks said that while "unemployment tends to lag the economic cycle" forward looking data such as purchasing managing indices are more positive and have shown improvement in manufacturing and service sector in all countries including the UK over the last three months.

He went on to say that it was "as if the tide was going out till last October and ever since then the tide has been coming back in and accelerating".

He said the most recent figures in the service sector saw the biggest one month increase in confidence in the past 15 years.

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